The Mossflower Gate
by Study in Silence
Summary: Daniel was trying to visit Kasuf and Skarra on Abydos. Instead, he ends up stranded on a strange planet with a missing DHD and a bunch of talking animals caught in a cultural limbo in the Middle Ages. SG-1 meets Redwall, Stargate Season 3 to 5.


_I claim no ownership to any part of either_ Redwall _or_ Stargate SG-1_. If you recognize a character, place or object, someone besides me thought it up. No profit was made from this work of fiction, emphasis on 'fiction', and it is meant purely for entertainment._

_._

The Mossflower Gate

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Prologue

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From the moment he woke up that morning, Nory had felt it to the roots of his whiskers. Something was most definitely brewing. The young otter was a little more alert than normal as he cast his nets, standing hip-deep in the running water. He dragged the net along through the water in the same fashion as he always did, but now his ears were as attuned to his surroundings as his eyes were on the stream. His dagger was sheathed on his belt, conveniently hidden by his sopping-wet tunic. Today he was more than ready to reach for it.

There was nothing to suggest trouble. No vermin had been seen hanging around the margins—at least none had been sighted. He didn't doubt that if any had been there, they would have been detected. The warriors of Holt Caraway were proficient in their craft, as they always had been, and always on alert. They missed nothing.

It didn't change the feeling in the pit of the young one's stomach. He couldn't protect against a feeling, nor could he divine its cause.

Cause!

He didn't even know that there was really anything going on. It might just be that he had eaten something he shouldn't, or maybe he really did have an over-active imagination. So he did the only thing he could think to. He had mentioned it to his Ma, and he carried the dagger his father gave him the last time he came back from Hullabaloo. Having it made him feel better.

Nory was fishing for freshwater shrimp. His Ma had promised him a pot of water shrimp and hotroot soup, with lots of leeks and buckets of pepper, if he brought back enough of the delectable crustaceans. As he hauled the net out of the water, finding it to contain a token amount of shrimp, and walked back to dump the net on the bank, he froze. Sounding slightly muffled and emanating from somewhere to his right, was what might be the most bizarre set of noises he had ever heard in his life. He felt a tremor pass through the water and the streambed shudder under his footpaws.

_&_

Several moments earlier, on a planet known commonly throughout the galaxy as the 'Tau'ri', or 'First World,' to Goa'uld-speaking cultures, and 'Midgard' to Asgard-protected societies, in a military installation inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, USA, a dial covered in symbols attached to a giant, grey, metal ring spun back and forth like the numbers on a padlock. Each time the dial halted, a wedge of orange light blossomed on the outer edge of the ring, and the voice of Sergeant Walter Harriman announced that a "chevron" was locked.

At the base of the black-painted metal ramp leading up to the device, waited Daniel Jackson. Anticipation crept up his spine and made his heart skip faster. In only a matter of seconds, he would be able to cross through the Stargate to his beloved Abydos. He may have been born on Earth, but the desert planet with its originally Egyptian people was more a home to him than Earth was. And his late wife's father and brother, Kasuf and Skarra, respectively, were near and dear to his heart. It had been too long since he had visited.

Returning to Abydos was always bittersweet after Sha're's original kidnapping. After her death…. Now the family was more important.

That didn't stop him from wishing it had turned out differently.

"Chevron six, locked."

Daniel was dressed in Abydonian robes with a backpack full of half finished translations and other necessary bits and pieces slung across his shoulders, and lightly armed. He carried a zat gun, his 9mm Berretta which, courtesy of Jack O'Neill and the US Air Force, he never went anywhere without, a combat knife, and two extra clips for the Berretta, in case of trouble. Unlikely though it seemed on Abydos, but there was rarely such a thing as a routine trip through the Gate, as he never failed to remind Jack. For such an established cynic, his friend picked funny (awful) times to be optimistic. And was very annoyed when Daniel's words turned out to be prophetic. Which was often.

Daniel thought it was Jack who was jinxing them, (after all, what could possibly tempt fate more than saying the words "milk run" in relation to interplanetary travel via wormhole) but any conversations on the matter rapidly degenerated into a childish "are not/are too" type argument. He smiled wryly. Jack was the only man he knew who could reduce someone knowledgeable in twenty-eight languages to such ineloquence.

If anything serious happened, the Abydonians possessed an armory well-stocked with American and stolen Goa'uld weapons.

Not much to worry about. Maybe.

Was he forgetting anything? Pen? Pencil? Notepad? Allergy meds? Spare glasses? Tissues? He was sure he had everything he needed. Except coffee. No coffee on Abydos, unfortunately. So why did he feel like something was missing? Maybe this was a little like one of those infamous ESP-like 'feelings' Jack seemed to get right before something went terribly wrong.

What a delightful thought.

"Chevron seven, engaged!"

The final chevron at the top of the massive ring lit up and a glowing, horizontal geyser _whooshed_ from the center of the Gate, before stabilizing into a shimmering blue pool. The glow of the open wormhole washed over the Gate room, glaring on the lenses of Daniel's glasses.

"Doctor Jackson," Major General Hammond called over the com system, "you have a go."

Daniel turned around to see the General's rotund figure directly behind Sergeant Harriman, and Jack's lankier form silhouetted in the dark depths of the control room behind them. He waved briefly at them before turning and walking up the ramp. He didn't hesitate to step through the rippling, luminescent vertical gateway.

The very second after the archeologist melted into the event horizon, white bolts of energy leapt and crackled across the surface of the Stargate. Onlookers watched in horror as tremors rippled through the floor under the feet of the Special Forces personnel in the Gate room, with no idea how the charges were affecting the traveler who had just passed through.

"Sir, I'm reading a major power surge in the 'Gate!" Not a moment after Sgt. Harriman spoke up, the wormhole suddenly disengaged.

"Redial Abydos," Hammond ordered sharply after an agonizing second of tense silence. "Send a MALP through and see if you can establish communication."

Harriman quickly complied.

The wormhole was opened without error this time and the probe sent through, but when radio contact was made with the Abydonian guards in the pyramid, they claimed Dr. Jackson had not come through there. The news hit those in the control room like a sledgehammer upside the head.

Hammond didn't waste time in calling Sgt. Siler, the SGC's favorite fixit man—and nearly constant denizen of the infirmary, and Major Carter, head of the 'brain trust' and one of the few people on base who actually understood all the little nuances of how the Stargate worked, to the Gate room to run diagnostics.

Standing in the wings, Colonel O'Neill's expression darkened in uselessness and self-recrimination. He had hovered over the archeologist all morning, gone so far as to come to see him off. He should have said something.

_&_

On the other end of the wormhole Daniel was catapulted a full ten yards before landing with a tooth-jarring splat, face-down in cold, sticky, soupy mud. His hands sank into the loose sludge as he tried to find purchase. He found it, however precarious it may be, and turned his head out of the mud, sputtering.

What had happened, he wondered in shock? He eased into a sitting position with difficulty, his fingers slipping and the mud making a nasty sucking sound as it let go of him, and realized his glasses had been left behind in the mud. He groped around where his head had been and found them on the third sweep, coming up with a handful of mud along with glass and wire. He frowned, and flicked away much of it. It was dark and trying to clean his gritty glasses on his muddy clothes would only scratch the lenses.

Where the hell was he? He crinkled his nose at the wet, cavern-like atmosphere. One thing was certain—wherever he was, it was _not_ the pyramid on Abydos.

Maybe Jack wasn't the only one with ESP.

_&_

_To be continued_


End file.
